BLOGS

So what’s a weblog (or blog for short)?
It's an online journal. It is sequential and the posts are arranged in reverse chronological order, which means the most recent posting appears at the top of the page and the older ones disappear off the front page and go into the archives.
Blogs are very user-friendly. People with little computer knowledge can open, update and maintain a blog.

Why use blogs?
Blogs have great potential for enhancing our classes. They can help students improve not only their reading and writing skills but also listening and speaking (since they can integrate other tools). As readers may be allowed to comment on the posts, blogs lend themselves perfectly for online discussions or debates.
Besides, as blogs are sequential, they can really complement the timeline of a school term and we teachers and the students themselves can track all the process and the progress made.
Moreover, blogs could be used to develop a ‘digital portfolio’, either class or individual portfolios, which could be visited by parents at any time of the year. Some schools have blogs for parents as well.

How to start working with blogs?
It is always a good idea to start by reading other teachers’ blogs, to see how they organize information, what kind of activities they design for their students, how often they blog, how the rubrics are delivered.

How are blogs used by teachers?
There are many different approaches. These are some I have come across:
- Some teachers have a class blog where he/she is the only one who posts and students leave comments. See this wonderful blog of a Brazilian teacher called Kelly (actually this is the blog she uses to communicate with her several groups of students) . Have a look at the different activities she has designed for her students, and their responses. She has had a truly enthusiastic response from her students.
http://kellycilc.wordpress.com/author/kellissima/
- Some others have class blogs where the students are invited to make postings, not just comments. See the blog Rita Zeinstejer (a teacher at Cultural Inglesa, Rosario) had with her CAE class last year. Rita encourages her students to go global and interact with students from other countries, a very enriching experience.
http://ritamz.ning.com/profiles/blog/list
- And some teachers have a class blog where they post the rubrics for the activities and the links to the students’ blogs. Each student has a blog where they do the work set by the teacher. Of course the students and the teacher visit each others’ blogs and leave comments. See this blog opened by Robert Squires, an ESL teacher from Montana, USA., for one of his pre-intermediate classes.
http://integratedskills-robert.blogspot.com/
and an example posting
http://muhammadunbelievable.blogspot.com/

As you can see, blogs can be used with students of different ages and levels. Besides, Robert’s blog is a very good example of how to integrate the coursebook with the blog. After dealing with a unit on description of works of art, he set an assignment where students had to write a paragraph about a work of art of their choice using the new vocab and structures. It is expected that they will be more motivated and therefore more careful with the quality of their work since they will be read and commented upon not only by their teacher but also their peers.

How should we correct our students' writing?
The discussion as to whether to correct or not students’ writing on blogs (as well as when or how) is inconclusive at this stage but there are some points most teachers agree on:
- blogs offer students a place where to practise writing without the pressure of grades
- if mistakes impair communication, the teacher (or a peer) should come up with the appropriate question to make the student explain/paraphrase what he means
- a very useful strategy is selecting common errors made by the students and addressing them in class
All in all, we should remember the aim is communication rather than accuracy.

Getting down to business
Well now, if you have reached the end of this long post, the only thing left is to start blogging. Click on the link below (actually copy and paste it in your browser, it doesn't work from here) and then open your own blog. Take the tour, watch the tutorial and start playing with this new tool to see how it works. Remember, just holler if there’s sth you can’t do.
https://blogger.com/start
This is another link to a document with very clear simple explanations.
http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/blogs/blogger.html